CONTEXT: Global and national agricultural development policies normally tend to focus more on enhancing farm productivity through technological changes than on better use of existing technologies. The role of improving technical efficiency in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction from crop production is the least explored area in the agricultural sector. But improving technical efficiency is necessary in the context of the limited availability of existing natural resources (particularly land and water) and the need for GHG emission reduction from the agriculture sector.

Cocoa is an important commodity crop and source of income for millions of small-holder farmers. Nonetheless, questions on cocoa tree functioning, best management practices and climate change responses remain. Modelling is a powerful tool to address these questions, complementing experimental work that is expensive and time consuming due to the long productive cycle of the cocoa system. However, compared to other crops, cocoa modelling has not received as much attention.

Agriculture in India contributes close to 20% of GDP and employs 44% of the workforce. Of these agricultural workers, 55% are women, and this percentage is likely to increase as women have fewer opportunities than men to find non-farm jobs. On top of that, women face significantly more barriers and constraints in accessing natural resources such as water and land because – despite significant legal and social efforts – the land rights of women are not widely acknowledged.

Climate extreme events have been observed more frequently since the 1970s throughout Ethiopia, which adversely affects the socio-economic development of the country, as its economy depends on agriculture, which, in turn, relies heavily on annual and seasonal rainfall. Climate extremes studies conducted in Ethiopia are mainly limited to a specific location or watershed, making it difficult to have insights at the national level. The present study thus aims to examine the observed climate extreme events in Ethiopia at both station and agro-ecological zone (AEZ) levels.

The primary aim of this study is to explore what the local water sources are, how they are
prioritized, how communities are coping with water scarcity, how water is locally governed
and controlled, and how decision-making dynamics at the household as well as community
levels impact the choice and use of improved and unimproved water sources, as well as the
differentiated impacts these choices have on women and men. Rural households in Kenya
must make a complex set of decisions around water source choices as they lack secure water

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the staple food of more than 50% of the world’s population. Manual puddled transplanted rice (PTR) system is still the predominant method of rice establishment. However, due to declining water tables, increasing water scarcity, water, labor- and energy-intensive nature of PTR, high labor wages, adverse efects of puddling on soil health and succeeding crops, and high methane emissions, this production system is becoming less proftable. These factors trigger the need for an alternative crop establishment method.

Most social-ecological landscapes are under threat due to poor resource management compounded by the impacts of climate change. The international Water Management Institute (IWMI) employs an inclusive landscape management approach for scaling innovations to transform food systems in degraded landscapes. This video highlights such innovations being deployed in Ghana through the #ONECGIAR Initiative on Transforming Food Systems in West and Central Africa (TAFS-WCA).

As resource users interact and impose externalities onto each other, institutions are needed to coordinate resource use, create trust, and provide incentives for sustainable management. Coordinated collective action can play a key role in enabling communities to manage natural resource commons more sustainably. But when such collective action is not present, what can be done to foster it? We contribute to the understanding of how experiential learning through games can affect behavioral change, potentially leading to more sustainable commons management.

Rice is one of the most widely grown cereal crops in India, providing primary nutrition as well as key livelihood and economic value – $23.3 billion in 2020. It is a water-intensive crop, however, and requires 1,000–2,000 millimeters of irrigation per cropping cycle, contributing to almost 40% of freshwater withdrawals in India. Most irrigation water is abstracted from groundwater, which relies on pumping that has led to a significant decline in the groundwater table in many places. Shifts in cultivation practices and management may foster greater sustainability.

Identifying the biophysical factors that affect the performance of irrigated crops in semi-arid conditions is pivotal to the success of profitable and sustainable agriculture under variable climate conditions. In this study, soil physical and chemical variables and plots characteristics were used through linear mixed and random forestbased modeling to evaluate the determinants of actual evapotranspiration (ETa) and crop water productivity (CWP) in rice in the Kou Valley irrigated scheme in Burkina Faso.

Governments in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are keen to expand irrigation to improve food security and are placing particular emphasis on adoption and use of smallholder private groundwater irrigation. Yet private irrigation is a multi-stage technology, the adoption of which is affected by fiscal support and extension services offered on different investment stages but also by uncertainties around actions that need to be undertaken in these stages.

Rice production in Asia and Africa has faced labor shortages and climate change issues such as unanticipated droughts and
floods, causing unstable yields and a high risk of crop losses. In addition, low farming efficiency, high carbon footprint,
and high postharvest losses are the major constraints in rice production. Low farming efficiency (high energy and
labor cost and agronomic input use) is mainly caused by poor land consolidation, lack of precision land leveling, crop